Natalie Reed, an atheist who is transgender has a new article called “God Does Not Love Trans People” over at Free Thought Blogs. It’s a very long post and raises numerous issues, many of which I simply can’t address for the sake of brevity. However, I do want to spend some time on her main assertion: transgender people should not believe in God or participate in religion because these are both harmful and dangerous and they enable the transphobic oppressive religious institutions. She states, “I honestly believe that religious faith is inherently dangerous and harmful.” For anyone who seeks to redefine God or say that God loves transgender people you are guilty of strengthening and bolstering a harmful and dangerous institution. She claims:

You spur on religious belief which, more often than not, maintains a climate of bigotry towards LGBTQ individuals. You insulate and protect them. You assent to the foundations of their hate, which they claim as justification. Asserting there is a God, and supporting the human tendency towards religious faith (whatever its form), does nothing but bolster the underlying principles on which the Westboro Baptist Church is based. If we wish to fight these organizations, we can’t do so simply pitting our own intuitive, faith-based assumption of God against theirs. We need to attack the foundation: the idea that faith is…good, or at least harmless…

Reed’s analysis is hard to stomach. She’s claiming that transgender people who believe in God are actually enabling a group that protests the funerals of gay soldiers simply because they believe in God. It’s not enough to face the daily oppression that trans people do, now there is the added blame of creating the culture that oppresses them for simply having faith in God. Queer people who go to church “maintain a climate of bigotry towards LGBTQ individuals.” Following this line of reasoning black people were responsible for maintaining a climate of racism and white supremacy because they participated in a religion that had been used to enslave them. African Americans must “assent to the foundations” of the hate and “bolster the underlying principles” of racism since they have enabled, supported and participated in religious organizations which have been predominantly racist. Women who attend Church on Sunday are responsible for the patriarchy that has defined so much of Christianity…etc. Blaming African Americans for racism or blaming queer people for homophobia merely because they believe in God or participate in religion is of course absurd.

The belief that underlies Reed’s thinking is that if we got rid of religion everyone would magically see how wrong white supremacy, transphobia, class oppression and sexism is. Please. Religion reflects the surrounding culture. That’s why of course the queer identified Metropolitan Community Church in San Francisco reflects people of the community: gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender…etc. It of course offers incredible resources and support for this group. These communities prove that religion can be reformed and used to resist the worst oppressions in society. Belief in God or participation in religion is not a predictor of one’s politic.

The reason so many religious institutions are oppressive is because so much of society is oppressive. Sexism, racism and homophobia are predominant in U.S. institutions. An educational institution that is anti-racist and counter-oppressive shouldn’t be blamed for the larger reality that our educational institutions are racist and sexist. Blaming queer friendly religious institutions for the more numerous homophobic religious institutions is like blaming a queer friendly business for a homophobic business simply because they are both businesses. There is zero relationship between a transgender person believing in God in San Francisco and the hateful acts of the Westboro Baptist Church. Yet Reed wants to put the blame at least partially at the feet of transgender people. It’s like positing some kind of correlation or relationship between a conservative Christian and a queer Muslim simply because they both believe in God.

The fundamental flaw in Reed’s argument is that it conflates people like James Cone who have stridently resisted white supremacist Christianity with the KKK who have used Christianity for their own racist agenda. Cone shouldn’t bother writing back against a dominant Christianity and suggest black theology or black images of the divine according to Reed. Womanist theologians who challenge the patriarchal and white images of God really have nothing to contribute because they themselves are guilty of the worst sin: colluding with the dangerous and harmful institution of religion. There is no meaningful difference between Jerry Falwell and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Reed’s analysis. Rather they both believed in God and thus are both responsible for anything terrible that has been done in the name of religion. It’s as simple as that.

Rather than wasting time challenging white supremacist theology, critiquing patriarchal religion and suggesting that African Americans and women have a role to play in religion Reed thinks they should simply become atheists and pronounce the dangers of believing in God. This will solve their problems. Transgender people shouldn’t bother with religion or God – it only serves to bolster Westboro Baptist Church.

As I’ve mentioned before it is very important not to dismiss religion outright because it has played a role in resisting slavery, racism and oppression. It has continued to be used in resisting homophobia, transphobia, racism and sexism and provides many useful functions in society. Being liberated from a belief in God is generally the last thing that most people need liberating from. Additionally religion is a very complex phenomenon that plays numerous roles in the world. But yet Natalie Reed dismisses religion entirely with her statements like: “ALL religion is dangerous…religious faith is inherently dangerous and harmful.” As I’ve mentioned before (see Reason and Racism in the New Atheist Movement) this is a hypothesis that needs to be examined. Yet, you won’t find any anthropological, sociological or scientific research that supports Reed’s claim. It is wildly out of touch with reality. It’s like saying that the belief that Elvis still lives is inherently dangerous and harmful. How so? Furthermore Reed is making truth claims about religions all over the globe that she has never even heard of. Yet, somehow she knows that their religious and cultural practices are harmful (despite never defining harmful or dangerous). I suppose she wants to impose a Western scientific atheism on indigenous cultures and religions around the world? This is the height of cultural imperialism and arrogance. I’ve never even heard of your religion or culture but I’m enlightened by science and I know it is harming you. I know your religion is dangerous because all religion is dangerous. You need to be like me. Please. Let’s not forget that it was because of the Western Colonizers that the Native American Sun Dance was banned in the U.S. until 1978.

I actually think Reed’s argument could very well do more to enable, bolster and support the most oppressive elements in religion. Her strategy of shouting that God doesn’t exist will fall on deaf ears to the vast majority of believers. Repeating the unscientific and false idea that “religious faith is inherently dangerous and harmful” only spreads more ignorance. She’s basically saying that Christianity in the U.S. should just remain in the hands of the dominant group that brought it to America: white, heterosexual men. Queer people, women and people of color should stay away and give up their attempts to change religion because their participation only does more harm. Anyone’s attempt for that matter to reform religion means they are guilty, guilty, guilty according to Reed. You are either with religion (i.e. homophobia, transphobia, danger, harm…etc.) or against religion (an enlightened anti-religious atheist.)

The reality is we need more queer and transgender people to become religious leaders. We need more women and people of color to hold significant positions of religious authority. Black liberation theologians, Womanists, and feminist theologians are important voices in the struggle against oppression and domination. But Reed would see a transgender religious leader as a step in the wrong direction. I see it as a necessary corrective to historically narrow minded institutions. Their presence doesn’t enable oppression but rather it works to lessen it by reforming and changing the structures that have defined religion for so long. Being a religious leader is a way of assimilating into the wider culture. Seeing transgender leaders in society is inspiring and empowering for other transgender people.

Religion is one of many institutions in society. People who have been historically marginalized have made great strides in assimilating into these institutions – whether they be government, medical, military, educational, sports or the music industry. I have all kinds of issues with the U.S. military, however I also know what role it played in the process of African Americans becoming more accepted in the U.S., especially during WWII. Sitting on the sideline saying God is dead/ALL religion is harmful while discounting the important ways in which marginalized peoples have used religion to challenge oppression only strengthens the dominant forces that control many of today’s religious institutions.

In conclusion Reed’s essay represent everything that is wrong with the predominant thrust of New Atheism. Her analysis is severely disembodied i.e. abstract, theoretical and completely out of touch with the reality of how complex religion is. She’s not writing about real religious people, nor does her analysis reflect the struggles that they go through (otherwise she couldn’t claim that ALL religion is harmful). Like many of her counterparts she defines religion as all of the bad stuff associated with religion. She’s obviously not in conversation with any Womanist theologians to find out just why they devote so much time to reforming white supremacy and patriarchy within Christianity. I don’t see any evidence of her reaching out to dialogue with religious people, whether they be people of color or transgender to actually ask them if they are being harmed by a belief in God. She doesn’t need to do this, because like most of the other New Atheists they have all of the answers already. The African American atheist Sikivu Hutchinson captures this attitude well, “As delineated by many white non-believers the New Atheism preserves and reproduces the status quo of white supremacy in its arrogant insularity.”

nice article be – you make some good points, and we do well to remember the role that religion has played and still plays at times in serving as an organizational/community platform for liberation of oppressed people’s.

i think though that where i am in agreement with reed is that traditional religion comes from a time in social evolution when we were patriarchal, homophobic, tribal and superstitious.

the battle lines are fairly clearly drawn in the culture wars by people who justify aggressive homophobia, anti choice legislation, an anti science rejection of climate change etc based on biblical beliefs.

the problem is that these beliefs come from an outdated time.

i am not sure i agree that belief in god equates with homophobia, but chances are pretty good that the two go together. personally i just think both are incorrect and *because god says so* is always a bad argument for any ideology, be it homophobic, jihadist, anti science, patriarchal or what have you….

when people resort to supernatural faith or stone age scriptures as a way to justify their beliefs about reality, ethics and politics we are always in trouble.

*traditional religion comes from a time in social evolution when we were patriarchal, homophobic, tribal and superstitious.*

Yeah, so did most all of our institutions. Government, politics, law, science, medicine, education…etc. have all reflected the surrounding culture since their inception. Look at the formation of the U.S. for example – racist, patriarchal, classist…etc – all enshrined into law. This institution still reflects many of these things yet you are willing to see it grow, change and evolve. Religion has done and is doing the same thing. Who knows what it will look like in 200 years.

*i am not sure i agree that belief in god equates with homophobia, but chances are pretty good that the two go together.*

There are 4,600 religions listed on Adherents. This includes Native Americans, indigenous groups and vast amounts of religions that you’ve never heard of. Some of these of course may reproduce homophobia but many do not. Don’t confuse Jerry Falwell with the complexity of the world’s religions, most of which you don’t know about. Plus, there are of course many believers who themselves are queer.

Be, your logic is good, but very few people will be talked into religion by rational argument. The deeply spiritual people I know have come to it through heart, spirit, and practice, not head. If one wanted to draw more people to religious ways of being, I believe it would be more effective to be inviting and welcoming while presenting oneself as someone an aching person might want to sit with and talk to. Responding to argument with argument seldom makes either person shift position.

I am very close to a number of transpeople. As I read your piece from the location of a transperson, I felt battered by your words. I have not read Ms. Reed’s piece, and perhaps you simply picked up her tone in your response. I kept reading to the end, hoping you would turn a corner and talk about Transcendence Gospel Choir and City of Refuge UCC in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, which welcomes and celebrates its trans members. I hoped you would mention resources like Justin Tanis’ “Trans-Gendered: Theology, Ministry, and Communities of Faith”, Chris Paige’s “TransFaith On-line” at http://www.transfaithonline.org, or “transACTION: A Transgender Curriculum For Churches and Religious Institutions” by Barbara Satin/Institute for Welcoming Resources/NGLTF. I hoped you would mention the annual Transgender Religious Leaders Summit hosted by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry each fall. I was disappointed.

Let’s draw out good examples of healthy religious organizations which embrace transpeople rather than arguing against someone who has not found them yet.

Hey Marnie – I mention my Church – Metropolitan Community Church in the piece, but yes it’d be good to include many more examples of the ways in which transgender people are supported by religion. I think this would be a good article in and of itself.

“That’s why of course the queer identified Metropolitan Community Church in San Francisco reflects people of the community: gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender…etc. It of course offers incredible resources and support for this group. These communities prove that religion can be reformed and used to resist the worst oppressions in society. Belief in God or participation in religion is not a predictor of one’s politic.”

For me, religion is an outdated concept. I live daily by the golden rule..It is always a challenge for me to relate to strictly religious persons, but it is easier when I apply my heart instead of my head. A heart based warm smile which lacks any trace of fear is to me what the golden rule is all about. Rather than have any religion, I would prefer a world based Golden Rule Society which is voluntary. Religion has a horrific history of violence and intolerance. Any semblance of tolerance and compassion and support is just as easily attributable to the operation of the Golden Rule and not to the hierarchy or structure of any single religion.

“Religion reflects the surrounding culture. That’s why of course the queer identified Metropolitan Community Church in San Francisco reflects people of the community: gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender…etc.”

So why not just keep the community and ditch the religion?

But the core of your problem is this:

“For anyone who seeks to redefine God or say that God loves transgender people you are guilty of strengthening and bolstering a harmful and dangerous institution.”

How do you go about “redefining” God? On what basis do you say God loves transgender people? What do you know about this God, and how do you know it?

You don’t. No one does. It’s just human beings with their ideas about what’s ok and what’s filthy and nasty. The religious ones use “God” to make their ideas seem bigger and more special. When the ideas themselves are good, that may seem not so terrible, but the problem is that there’s no way to make sure the ideas are always good (to put it mildly). That’s why “God” as guarantor of Bigness and Specialness is so dangerous.

Brought to you by “the echo chamber at FTB.” Give my love to the echo chamber at Tikkun.

“God” is not an assertion, but, rather, is an experience. I have no problem with people rejecting institutional religion. I have profound problems with people who have not lived a deep practice of interiority reducing spiritual experience to religion. When one begins to prescribes what is acceptable behavior for another person, that person should have the self respect to pay attention to what the “Other” is saying about one’s own experience.

It is my claim from years of working with others in meditation that anyone who spends serious time in meditation will have an experience of transcendence. There is nothing irrational or unreasonable about such an experience. It is simply transcendent. I agree that communicative praxis reflects one’s cultural situs and its resultant conditioning. Yes, cultural bias requires a significant critique. Such a critique will never demolish or destabilize a living experience of transcendence. One’s radical commitment to identity (LGBTQ or other) is not endangered by transcendence. It is strengthened and affirmed.

When each of us is threatened by another’s experience, I question how integral our own sense of identity is. If we truly know who we are and are firmly grounded in our sense of communal or social reality,nothing can endanger us. Adult and mature, our defensiveness disappears and no amount of oppression can destabilize our self reference. When we engage in radical praxis from such a place we make it possible for others to change without succumbing to their own fear of change. This takes serious spiritual work. It is my assertion (and this is, I admit, an act of faith) that real social transformation is engendered by such a stance with respect to suffering.

There’s a HUGE leap from the idea of some sort of emotional transcendent state, to the idea of an interventionist materialistic deity. I’m actually not one to throw out the baby with the bathwater, per se. I think that “religious” communities can do a lot of good. That said, I do think that what I think the general Gnu Atheist argument boils down to is more or less correct.

When you use the word “God”, as most religious individuals do, you reinforce authoritarian and morally arbitrary concepts, memes and tropes in our society. That’s it. That’s what our argument really boils down to. That’s really what Reed was saying in her blog post, more or less. Personally, I think a good first step is to stop using the word “God” in that fashion. And it should NEVER be used in the upper-case. Never Ever Ever.

Unless you really do believe in an authoritarian and morally arbitrary deity. Then well whatever. And if you don’t? Well I’m a bit of a militant atheist to be honest. You know..along the same lines of the old militant agnostic joke?

All right, it’s not a parody. In that case, I’ll ask a non-parodic question: what difference does an experience of transcendence make to whether or not “God” loves transgender people? What in fact does it have to do with “God” at all?

She never said “you need to be like me”. You said that. You said that because you think of religion as part of someone’s identity, what makes them who they are, and she thinks of religion as an idea.

The problem with that is that if what you say is true, you have no reason to argue with bigoted religious people. After all, they just want to hate on queer people because it is their cultural and religious belief that god hates fags. Stop trying to make them like you.

Of course that’s patently absurd and you should try to make them like you, because in this case, you’re right and they’re wrong. But as far as these religious claims go, Natalie is right and proponents of religious ideas are wrong.

Natalie’s essay really spoke to me (I’m a Jewish atheist who is also a woman who is trans). And Be, I truly do appreciate your response and the call for more LGBTQ people in the clergy (although for many religions… it… just… ain’t… gonna… happen). The problem as I see it is that, for Judaism, it’s very much grounded in teaching and holy books which contain so many problematic opinions and statements whether about slavery, women, gay/queer people, or god smiting everyone you don’t like, etc. that I can’t get past that. Yes, all forms of Judaism except the Orthodox are very trans accepting and generally progressive (in theory!) but I still feel trying to explain so many of the truly offensive passages in the Bible, Talmud, Mishna (and various other Rabbinic opinions) is like a house of cards. I was shocked to go to the Bat Mitzvah of the daughter of a women couple I know only to find the Torah passage the girl was reading (it just happened to cycle through to that one) was a really offensive section about how girls should be treated as property by their fathers and what happens if they talk back. I then had to listen to the Rabbi (a queer ID’d lesbian) try to backpedal and explain how that passage wasn’t offensive and how we should learn from it. Yes, queer/trans clergy are important, but I get no satisfaction from hearing someone try to tell me how central tenants of a religion aren’t homophobic, transphobic, racist or sexist. Enough already!

I’m always so interested in how the “free thinkers” never tire of telling everyone else how they are to think. Natalie, who I’d never read before and Ophelia, who I’ve read more than a little of, are typical of this kind of would be intellectual monitors who are an increasingly annoying on the internet.

I’m especially interested in them as I study how many of these “free thinkers” don’t believe that thinking can be free but is, in fact, determined due to their faith in a held over 18th -19th century form of materialism. Ophelia, in attempting to pooh-pooh transcendent experience, does what all such ideologues does and grants her experience and thinking a transcendence that she denies for that of those whose experience and thinking she finds offensive. It’s well past time for people to insist that they are the ones to decide what their own experience means, it’s not out of the question that they have experienced things that the new atheists can’t due to their emotional ideological holdings. I’ve got no problem with atheists deciding what they believe their experience does or doesn’t mean, no more than I’ve got with religious people deciding what theirs means.

The consistent tendency in your attacks on outspoken atheism, Scofield, appears to be your incredible cowardice. When we last met, you were rattling off ridiculous lies about Greta Christina (outspoken queer atheists really chap your hide, don’t they?) in service of your ridiculous claim that atheist challenges to religion are inherently racist.

In this piece, I don’t see as many flat-out lies as you packed into your hatchet job on Christina, but the same underlying cowardice is evident in the manner in which you’ve decided you don’t even need to sully yourself with the actual argument Reed is making.

Why does Tikkun continue to publish such thoughtless garbage? Surely there are more honest and forthright critics of atheism the publication could find.

Reed’s analysis is hard to stomach. She’s claiming that transgender people who believe in God are actually enabling a group that protests the funerals of gay soldiers simply because they believe in God.

And? That implication is incorrect or false because….? Funny how you never explain that.

Reed has made an argument. If you wish to rebut it, it behooves you to say something that’s actually substantive; instead, all it appears you’ve got is “Oh my gawwwwd that’s such a horrrrible thing to say!” All you’re doing here is grandstanding about how offensive you perceive Reed’s argument to be – but you haven’t provided any basis for anyone else to find it offensive other than your own evidently enormous investment in religious privilege. Your deep and irrational antipathy to challenges to religious dogma aside, arguing that belief in gods (and open support of such ideas) is morally fraught is not itself blameworthy.

The grandstanding you’re practicing here can sometimes work; as is clear from some supportive commenters on this thread, beating up on atheists can sometimes win you friends with other atheophobes. Nonetheless, it leaves actual arguments like Reed’s untouched. You certainly haven’t laid a glove on her here.

Following this line of reasoning black people were responsible for maintaining a climate of racism and white supremacy because they participated in a religion that had been used to enslave them.

You’re back on that hobby-horse again? The one that got your butt kicked all over the internet for your nauseatingly condescending let-me-tell-you-what-African-Americans-do-and-don’t-need shtick?

It was more than slightly enjoyable to see your ugly white privilege crammed down your throat in that exchange:

When Scofield, in a follow-up comment says “Imagine if much of the passion and fire that characterizes much of the New Atheist community could be directed towards the racial, class and patriarchal oppression that believers experience rather than their beliefs about God or heaven”, he appears ignorant of the degree to which specific beliefs about God or heaven reinforce racial, class, heterosexist and patriarchal oppression. When he speaks approvingly of the work of the Metro Community Church with respect to AIDS, he misses the other side of the coin, in which the black church virtually ignored the AIDS crisis unfolding in its own choir pews. African Americans are most likely to believe in literal interpretations of the Bible; this phenomenon buttresses homophobic and sexist dynamics within the black religious community. The beliefs are therefore not separate from the social justice issues, they are part and parcel, and challenging them is most definitely relevant.

Again, though, what’s going on here is that you’ve elected not to deal with Reed’s actual argument, preferring to gesticulate and holler about how awful you think that argument is. That happens to be meaningless as a rebuttal, especially given that the awfulness you’re relying on is underwritten by nothing but your own religious privilege and atheophobia.

Blaming African Americans for racism or blaming queer people for homophobia merely because they believe in God or participate in religion is of course absurd.

Reed has not in fact “blam[ed] African Americans for racism” or “queer people for homophobia” – but even if she had, precisely what reasoning brings you to the conclusion that such blame would be “absurd”? Obviously you utterly despise public criticism of religion, but why should your audience – say, someone who does not share this particular privileged investment of yours in religion’s total freedom from critique – agree with this conclusion of yours? “It’s absurd because it conflicts with my prejudices” happens to be a rather weak argument.

The belief that underlies Reed’s thinking is that if we got rid of religion everyone would magically see how wrong white supremacy, transphobia, class oppression and sexism is.

Aha! There we have the first blatant lie in your article. Reed has argued no such thing. Reed has given no indication whatsoever that she believes any such thing. You have simply made that notion up, stuffed it into her head, and pretended that that “belief” has something to do with her argument. Your continuing practice of dealing with ideas you disagree with by brutally misrepresenting them is utterly shameful.

The reason so many religious institutions are oppressive is because so much of society is oppressive.

How do you know that? What reasoning has brought you to that conclusion? Why should anyone believe that you’ve spent the tiniest moment considering the responsibility that religion per se might bear for the massive amounts of oppression that religious institutions have contributed to for thousands of years?

Your opponents don’t accept your dogmatic shibboleths – nor should anyone who is committed to reasoned argument. Repeating those shibboleths does not make them any more convincing.

An educational institution that is anti-racist and counter-oppressive shouldn’t be blamed for the larger reality that our educational institutions are racist and sexist.

Reed, among many others, have explained at length why any “institution” that supports and legitimizes religious faith is partially responsible for the damage that such faith does in the world. Your thoughtless denials do nothing to rebut those explanations.

Blaming queer friendly religious institutions for the more numerous homophobic religious institutions is like blaming a queer friendly business for a homophobic business simply because they are both businesses.

No. Again, your willful blindness is impressively thick, but that is not Reed’s argument, nor is it the argument of any atheist (such as Christina, whom you’ve slimed repeatedly with this nonsense) you’ve overtly responded to.

Clearly you have this bizarre notion that the gnu atheist argument amounts to:

This is a simply ridiculous misconstrual of Reed’s argument, Christina’s argument, and that of innumerable other outspoken atheists (Sam Harris, Ophelia Benson, Eric MacDonald, et a whole lot of cetera) whose ideas you clearly can’t bring yourself to think about carefully.

All of the above – Reed most recently and relevantly for this particular hit piece of yours – call attention to the fundamental nature of religious claims, and the fundamental and indisputable fact that all such claims are (1) irrational and (2) arbitrary. As Reed notes, and you blithely ignore (despite the fact that you quoted the latter portion of this above):

[S]aying “God loves trans people” has absolutely no more underlying justification, evidence or substance than does “God hates fags”. Neither party has any evidence on which to base this, and both are just extrapolations based on assuming God’s will ought reflect their own. We cannot possibly know how God feels about anyone (entertaining briefly the possibility that He even exists). When you introduce “God loves trans people” into the dialogue, you have nothing backing you up with which to cause a transphobic religious believer to accept your message or reconsider their position, but you have just validated, supported and helped normalize his belief in God- a God that he probably thinks hates us very, very much. Congrats! You spur on religious belief which, more often than not, maintains a climate of bigotry towards LGBTQ individuals. You insulate and protect them. You assent to the foundations of their hate, which they claim as justification. Asserting there is a God, and supporting the human tendency towards religious faith (whatever its form), does nothing but bolster the underlying principles on which the Westboro Baptist Church is based.

That last – the “underlying principles” that are shared by both minority-hating and minority-supported forms of religious thought – is the focus of this particular gnu atheist critique. You utterly refuse to pay attention to this.

Your thoughtless analogy with “business” (once upon a time you tried the same nonsense with “government”) lays bare your utter refusal to come to grips with the above argument. What are the “underlying principles” of business? Well, presumably, the key one is something about the social utility of two or more parties exchanging items of value in such a way that they both/all believe they’re better off. Now – does anyone who accepts this “underlying principle” thus prevent herself from rationally objecting to applications of it that do harm to other principles she holds? Clearly not: there is nothing arbitrary or illogical about agreeing that positive-sum exchanges of value are generally a good thing, but that they cease to be so when particular ethical lines (that are themselves entirely supported by reason) are crossed.

And that happens to be a direct point of disanalogy that refutes your objection. Inherent in any statement of the form “God loves X,” “God hates Y,” or “God wants Z” are notions – underlying principles – such as (1) God exists; (2) God is capable of loving/hating/wanting things; and (3) we should share God’s perspective with regard to X, Y, and Z. Not incidentally, every one of those three notions has no basis in evidence or reason; they are all overwhelmingly dubious.

What Reed, Christina, Harris, and all of the numerous atheists who refuse to practice your willful blindness with regard to these issues have noticed is that superficially “good” uses of the above tropes, such as “God loves trans people” and “God wants you to boycott buses in Montgomery,” socially legitimizes notions (1) through (3), among many others – which then enables nasty bigots (some of whom are the very same people who were using the tropes in ‘good’ ways) to use those baseless but now legitimized notions to argue things like “God hates fags,” “God wants you to fight to keep the prayer banner up in Cranston High School,” and “God wants you to vote to Preserve Marriage.” And as a result supposedly “good” uses of religion have enabled and strengthened religious bigotry, where open skepticism and criticism of religion would weaken it.

That, in a few-paragraph nutshell, is the argument. Your utter refusal to address it does not make it go away.

Belief in God or participation in religion is not a predictor of one’s politic.

The reason so many religious institutions are oppressive is because so much of society is oppressive.

How do you know that? What evidence do you have for that? What reasoning has brought you to that conclusion? Why do you insist on demanding that atheists provide stacks of empirical research for our assertions when you blather baseless and unexamined dogma in response?

An educational institution that is anti-racist and counter-oppressive shouldn’t be blamed for the larger reality that our educational institutions are racist and sexist.

Why not? Because you don’t like it? Again, given your demonstrably deep antipathy toward outspoken atheists (not to mention your enormous religious privilege, and indeed your material interest in defending the industry that employs you), why would any of us take seriously an unexplained declaration from you about what we “should” do? Obviously it would serve your personal interests if we simply shut up. Somehow that doesn’t seem to us like a very good basis for a “should” that deserves any credibility.

The fundamental flaw in Reed’s argument is that it conflates people like James Cone who have stridently resisted white supremacist Christianity with the KKK who have used Christianity for their own racist agenda.

No, in fact it doesn’t. That’s just your willfully blind misreading. Neither Reed nor any other gnu atheist you’ve cited has “conflated” any such thing. Your analysis is flatly wrong.

As I’ve mentioned before it is very important not to dismiss religion outright because it has played a role in resisting slavery, racism and oppression.

Yes, and the dishonesty, privilege, and illogic you showed in that article were cut to shreds on this site and several others. You seriously want to draw attention to that disaster of yours?

And, as is the case for basically all of your cited opponents, she explains why she draws that conclusion. You, meanwhile, are too important and superior to have to deal with any measly arguments, so you slime-and-run instead. How ridiculous.

Yet, you won’t find any anthropological, sociological or scientific research that supports Reed’s claim.

Oh, really? It would appear that you haven’t actually looked.

And, of course, we see the other side of your religious-privilege double standard. Where, pray tell, is the “anthropological, sociological or scientific research” that led you to conclusions such as “[t]he reason so many religious institutions are oppressive is because so much of society is oppressive,” hm?

Odd how it’s only lowly atheists who have to fork over the evidence (something we do on frequent occasion, actually, though clearly you can’t be bothered to find that out) – you’re too important for such plebian concerns. What hypocritical nonsense.

Her strategy of shouting that God doesn’t exist will fall on deaf ears to the vast majority of believers.

And yet nonbelief, both in the United States and worldwide, is growing by leaps and bounds, whereas liberal religion is hemorrhaging members. Where’s that lovely “anthropological, sociological or scientific research” now, Be? How come you haven’t noticed that both the world and our nation is secularizing fast, such that “shout”s like Reeds are demonstrably not “fall[ing] on deaf ears”?

Again, you are clearly unfamiliar with the real demographic world around you.

She’s basically saying that Christianity in the U.S. should just remain in the hands of the dominant group that brought it to America: white, heterosexual men.

That’s another ridiculous misrepresentation of Reed’s argument – but why, pray tell, would that be such a horrible outcome? “White, heterosexual men” such as yours truly are a small and declining minority in the United States. We are losing power and hegemony fast – and thank goodness. Limiting religion to my over-the-hill demographic (the same one that’s the last major bastion of support for legalized homophobia) would be a terrific step toward defanging religion.

Why do you care so much more about the power of your industry than you do about the pain and injustice it inflicts on innocent people?

In conclusion Reed’s essay represent everything that is wrong with the predominant thrust of New Atheism. Her analysis is severely disembodied i.e. abstract, theoretical and completely out of touch with the reality of how complex religion is. She’s not writing about real religious people, nor does her analysis reflect the struggles that they go through (otherwise she couldn’t claim that ALL religion is harmful). Like many of her counterparts she defines religion as all of the bad stuff associated with religion.

All flatly false. Your utter failure to read Reed’s work (or the work, it would appear, of any other gnu) carefully does not represent a failure on her part. Her “claim that ALL religion is harmful” is in fact all about a particular element – “underlying principles” – that you clearly cannot bring yourself to address.

Lies, willful blindness, and overwhelming religious privilege do not constitute a rational rebuttal of Reed’s work or anyone else’s. You’re going to have to try quite a bit harder if you desire to be taken seriously.

If, instead of religion and what God wants, the battle for respect for LGBTQ individuals was taking place on the field of astrology and what the planets tell us – do you think you might see the fundamental problem a little bit more clearly?

Does the Age of Aquarius allow for gay marriage? Surely queer people who believe in astrology are not enabling those hate-filled astrologers who go off the tracks and say ‘no.’ Astrology in general can’t be the problem in a culture which honors and respects astrology, encourages people to believe it and follow it as their moral guide to life — and then has some people using it to support good things. Let’s just argue against the people who obviously get their charts wrong.

This strategy is problematic. Not just in an ‘abstract, theoretical way,’ I think, but as a practical matter.

That was jargon-tastic. Were you hoping that atheists didn’t know what all those words meant? “Communicative praxis reflects one’s cultural situs” sure sounds nicer than “People tend to believe whatever society tells them to.” (Or did you mean, “people say crazy stuff if they think they’re supposed to”?) The version with the big words also sounds much less dangerous to your point – and your writing style, for that matter – than any accessible translation would.

Because you don’t actually give a good reason why “such a critique will never demolish or destabilize a living experience of transcendence.” You just say it. I found this idea less annoying when it was called “non-overlapping magisteria.” Are we supposed to buy that the mental experience you’re talking about is a different kind of thing from other mental experiences because you name it “God” and “transcendence” and “living”? When you haven’t given any good reason why any of those terms describe the experience accurately?

And by the way, you can get down off the “I’m more enlightened and spiritual than you ignorant atheists” high horse. I’ve practiced meditation for more than half my life. The mental experience is real and distinctive, not to mention fun and useful. But that doesn’t prove that the word “spiritual” has a real-world referent, any more than the distinctive experience of prayer proves that the word “God” has a real-world referent, or the distinctive experience of hallucination proves that “dancing pink elephant” has a real-world referent.

And even if none of that were true, Ophelia is still correct – you’re proving Reed’s point rather than Scofield’s. If God is an experience, rather than a person or any other kind of factual being we might make claims about, then it cannot love transgendered people.

Once again, Scofield’s nonsense is bringing out terrific work from atheist bloggers. Pointing out the major logical flaws in these screeds is proving more than a little useful.

Here‘s Chris Hallquist, making much the same point (about Reed’s point) that I did, above:

The point is that by putting so much stock in a claim for which there is no evidence (“God loves trans people”), you legitimize the idea that such unsupported claims have a place in the discussion. You legitimize the idea that who God does or does not love should influence how we treat our fellow human beings. That’s the problem.

What does [Scofield] mean about seeking to redefine God? On what basis does he or anyone say that God loves transgender people? How does Be Scofield (or anyone) know that “God” loves transgender people or that “God” hates them? How does anyone know anything about what “God” thinks of transgender people or any other people?

The short answer is that he doesn’t, and neither does anyone.

Given that, what is the point of “redefining” god? What is the point of paying any attention to god at all? Given that no one knows anything about it at all – why argue about its loves or hatreds?

How easy it must be to be Be Scofield. How utterly magical it must be to do all of this with such seeming facility. Despite all the hardship he’s endured in realizing his trans status, what a simple world it must now all be to Be with his cosmic connection to the inerrant reality of his theism. How comforting it must be to know that your belief, out of 4300 possible super-beliefs and infinite sub-beliefs, is exactly right because it’s right because it’s right, never mind all those times that people with the same belief have hurt you in the name of said belief. It almost makes me envious.

Read ‘em all before more atheists join in the fun.

Again, one salutary consequence of Scofield repeating the same thoughtless fallacies is that it gives outspoken atheists all the more opportunities to expose same as thoughtless fallacies. It’s a pretty solid silver lining for the ugly clouds this blog keeps publishing.

Clearly the atheist blog network is out, swamping an discussion instead of making an argument. It’s one of their favorite tactics these days.

“If God is an experience, rather than a person or any other kind of factual being we might make claims about, then it cannot love transgendered people. ” Rieux

I know several transgendered people who would observe that’s not what their experience of God’s love is, No straight person has any business telling them what their own experience means, no one, not even another transgendered person has any business asserting that their knowledge of that experience is superior to the one and only person who has had it.

This gay man has no problem telling atheists that glbt people aren’t the property of atheists, nor is my mind required to follow the dictates of atheists, nor is my experience. Atheists don’t own glbt issues, no one does because glbt people are first and foremost individuals with different ideas and different lives in different contexts. We aren’t some sociological myth or conveniently and ideologically drawn philosophical abstraction.

Atheism is no guarantee that someone will be free of hatred of glbt people, I’ve been doing a bit of research on Madalyn Murray O’Hair who, it seems, was quite given to expressions of hatred against gay people as were and are a number of other atheists. Those countries with officially atheist governments have hardly been havens of enlightenment on these issues.

Religious liberals and progressives have been putting up with the bullying of the atheist fad for too long, it’s past time for us to free public discourse of the stifling of our expression by an illiberal and obnoxious intellectual fad. Materialism and most of contemporary atheism based in materialism are not liberal at their most basic level.

“If God is an experience, rather than a person or any other kind of factual being we might make claims about, then it cannot love transgendered people. ” Rieux

Huh? Who, me?

Is that supposed to be some kind of random, out-of-the-blue shout-out, or do you actually think I wrote that? You don’t read too good, do you, McKooky?

I know several transgendered people who would observe that’s not what their experience of God’s love is, No straight person has any business telling them what their own experience means, no one, not even another transgendered person has any business asserting that their knowledge of that experience is superior to the one and only person who has had it.

How nice. Under such suffocating religious privilege, “no one” “has any business” saying the slightest unkind word about any religious notion, no matter how baseless, contradictory, or absurd. It’s a good thing that believers have you around to ensure that their ideas are entirely insulated from critical scrutiny! Those notions might not survive otherwise – and then where would we be?

This gay man has no problem telling atheists that glbt people aren’t the property of atheists….

Nor has any atheist, GLBT or not, asserted otherwise.

You can keep pretending that subjecting the religious ideas you (and those you purport to represent) inject into the public sphere to ordinary criticism is some kind of bigoted attack on you; no matter how fervently you believe it, that pretense is nothing more than your incredible privilege talking.

…nor is my mind required to follow the dictates of atheists, nor is my experience.

Fine; again, no one is placing requirements on “your mind.” We’re just participating in the ordinary free marketplace of ideas, in which it is well within our rights to point out that the flights of fancy you engage in are baseless, irrational, and destructive. Welcome to grown-up public discourse.

Atheism is no guarantee that someone will be free of hatred of glbt people….

Nor, shockingly enough, are atoothfairyism or aeasterbunnyism. And atheists have never pretended that our ranks are bigotry-free. However, the very atheists that Scofield has been sliming on this blog have spent much of the past year thoroughly pummeling certain atheist parties who have engaged in homophobic, transphobic, and (most infamously) misogynist rhetoric. Fat lot of good it’s done us with the likes of Scofield.

It’s not so hard to effectively oppose hatred that exists within one’s own ranks when one hasn’t already conceded all of the fundamental postulates that the bigots in question need to dehumanize despised minorities.

I’ve been doing a bit of research on Madalyn Murray O’Hair who, it seems, was quite given to expressions of hatred against gay people….

I think the proper receptacle for that complaint would be the shrine we atheists have built to Her Most Unholy O’Hairness, in light of how impeccable we believe everything she ever did or said was. Good luck finding it, though.

Back in this century, one inconvenient fact for you is that American atheists are vastly more pro-gay than is any major religious demographic in the United States. Whining about the tiny fraction of American atheists who oppose GLBT rights rather than the hundred million or so American Catholics and Protestants who do so (while you concede to those homophobes the legitimacy of all the theistic nonsense that they need to support their bigotry) is a rather odd move.

Those countries with officially atheist governments have hardly been havens of enlightenment on these issues.

Ah, yes, the Stalin Card. It’s funny, though, how the modern nations, such as Sweden, Denmark, Holland, and New Zealand, whose populations are predominantly secular are indeed “havens of enlightenment on these issues.” In today’s world, gay-friendliness and demographic secularity do in fact go hand-in-hand. How troublesome, right? Clearly those disgusting pro-gay nations badly need to Come to Jesus!

Religious liberals and progressives have been putting up with the bullying of the atheist fad for too long, it’s past time for us to free public discourse of the stifling of our expression by an illiberal and obnoxious intellectual fad.

Yeah, you can keep telling yourself that. On a planet and in a nation that are both secularizing quickly, you’re welcome to continue assuring yourself that rejection of religion is a mere “fad” that will assuredly fade away, that religion’s four-century-old slide from complete and unquestioned dominance will suddenly stop. Back in the real world, though, in which large chunks of the planet have all but entirely thrown off the shackles of religious nonsense and in which atheist communities are bursting at the seams with energy and new members (including a fabulous number of out-and-proud queer ones), things look somewhat different than your hopeful fantasy.

Neither Bronze Age fairy tales nor obscurantist modern attempts to salvage them nor your privileged attempts to silence criticism of either (oh, nooo – “the stifling of our expression”; how awful it must be when someone dares to openly challenge the ideas you shove into our lives!) are in fact the slightest bit liberal. Liberalism is the commitment to individual liberty and equal rights – and, once again, outside of your tumid fantasies there’s nothing about open challenges to religious dogma that’s the slightest bit contrary to such commitments. Neither your religious beliefs nor the absurd privilege underlying your entire jeremiad against atheists is in fact your self.

Second of all, the fact that you don’t understand the argument doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

It’s not a matter of interpreting the experience for them. It’s a matter of what the word experience means. An experience is not a person. If you want to make a case for a personal God, then we can go there and have that conversation. But that is not what Willems said. He said that “God is not a claim, God is an experience.” An experience is an event, not an entity and certainly not a person. It cannot have emotions or opinions. It just doesn’t make any sense to claim that. It’s like saying that happiness loves cheeseburgers, or that seeing a red balloon is afraid of spiders.

If a transgendered person, while meditating, feels loved and affirmed, then fine. That’s a thing that happened, and it sounds like a good thing. I certainly can’t make it not have happened by arguing on the internet, nor in this case would I want to. But to say from that that the experience of the meditation is a thing (or a god!) that loves hir is to make a category mistake. You don’t get to talk nonsense just because you’re talking about something that happened to you.

As for the rest of your comment, you’re attacking a strawman. Why don’t you go actually read Reed’s article? When you show signs of actually understanding what she said, then we can talk about it.

(By the way, the opposite of “transgendered” is not “straight.” Natalie Reed is both straight and transgendered, and I am neither. The word you want is “cisgendered.”)

“Second of all, the fact that you don’t understand the argument doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

” It’s not a matter of interpreting the experience for them. It’s a matter of what the word experience means. An experience is not a person. ” Robert B

I’m sorry for the misattribution, it was a lot to wade through and keep straight.

All any one of us knows about anyone else is what we experience of them. All I know of you is the experience I have of reading what you’ve posted here. All I can conclude about you, including that such a person as “Robert B” exists is based on that experience. My conclusions that you exist and that you have have the nature I conclude you have is based on that experience. If I told someone about this exchange they would be quite able to do anything from believe that you exist and that you are as I say you are to believing that I made you up. I’ve had the experience of blog atheists doubting that people I talk about exist, accusing me of making up people I’ve known for years. Which is a lesson in the ability of disbelief to be absurdly wrong and disbelief to be as much an act of willful and self serving, self delusion as overly credulous belief.

A conclusion that a transgenered person might have that G-d loves them is also based in their experience and such a transgendered person is in the privileged position of knowing their experience directly. Not a single other person in the world is as able to characterize their experience as they are. I know a number of transgendered people who are religious, who apparently experience being loved by G-d. You and Ophelia and Greta C. are in no position to tell them you are more able to determine their experience than they are. It’s an act of supreme arrogance based in absolutely nothing but your ideological choices to assert that you are.

Having argued these issues with atheists for about the past five years I’ve concluded that it’s primarily an emotional hatred of religion, religious people and a conceited insistence on the intellectual superiority of atheists are are the actual substance of this kind of atheism. That’s a judgement based in my experience of as much of the thinking of contemporary atheists and the quality of their arguments, my conclusion that their inability to experience what religious people feel is based in that predispositions is given as a suggestion for consideration and not as an absolute statement about the basic issue of G-d’s existence. Unlike the atheists in this discussion, I’m not interested in converting atheists to belief because I think that depends on their choices and isn’t something I can do.

Thank you, I’ve studied epistemology, too. But to experience being loved by God is different from having an experience that is itself God. The latter is what Willems was talking about and what I was responding to. The former implies that there actually is an entity called “God” who loves people, which is a claim about facts, which is something that Willems explicitly said was false in his first sentence. (And by the way, if someone’s account of an experience they had makes claims of fact, then we certainly can look for independent evidence for and against those claims. Facts can be checked, no matter where they come from.)

Its unfortunate when atheists act as though theists were all the same and all had identical beliefs. It’s very strange when theists do it to each other. You’re trying to defend Willems’ argument without agreeing with it. Maybe you should read up on some of that Bronze Age logic you rightly laud.

To be fair, the reason why this is done is that because a LOT of people and groups put a lot of time and energy in promoting the idea that, at the very least, all Christians believe roughly the same thing. And we’re not talking atheist/non-belief groups here. We’re talking religious organizations and leaders.

That’s where religious privilege comes from, after all.

And you’re right. It’s VERY strange, especially considering the old massive divides between various groups/interpretations. My personal theory is over the last few decades, Christianity is less about well..Christ, and more about the worship of a more materialistic interpretation of “God”. It’s a very real change that takes out a lot of the old differences that once split apart Christianity. It’s about raw theism.

Now, I’m not a strict rationalist myself. I don’t think that it’s irrationalism in and of itself that makes the religions in our world potentially dangerous…or to be more precise, I think we all have our own irrationalities and as such I don’t think it’s nearly as desensitizing as strict rationalists claim. (Although to be fair, even though I disagree with them, this isn’t a condemnation of those ideas. In fact, they may be right and I may be wrong). However, the nature of how we see deities I think does actually matter. Pantheism, as an example, is generally fine for me. It’s harmless in the big scale of things. I’m fine..happy even with modern religions switching from a (Mono)Theistic view to an outright Pantheistic view. Great. I think that Be would be happy with that.

The question is how to make it happen.

Attacking atheists is not going to make it happen.

What is going to make it happen? Well, changing the language for one. I personally recommend dropping “God” out of the spiritual lexicon. It’s a specific word that implies specific things. Make up a new word or start being clear with what you do believe. Start changing the culture. Publicly challenge (mono)theistic symbols and language. Want change start fighting for change.

The original Gnu Atheist complaint about not religion, but about EVEN moderate and progressive religion is the usage of language and imagery that reinforces memes tropes and concepts for more conservative and fundamental religion. That was the original “Dawkins’ Complaint” as I like to call it. This isn’t something to fight against. It’s something to take to heart.

We’re all on the same road (although some of us want to go further than others, of course) and we’re all going in the same direction. There’s no need for the sniping that comes from this particular camp.

Rieux, having apologized for the misattribution about all I can say is thank you for serving as an illustration of my points in my reply to Robert B. Good job.

Oh, and, “Bronze age fairy tales”. Other than pointing out that you guys should at the very least try to create a few newer cliched pat dismissals, you should consider other things from the “bronze age” that you would like to do without, including the bases of logic and mathematics and literacy. If I didn’t suspect that science, technology and selfishness isn’t going to kill off our species before it could happen, I can easily imagine some arrogant young pups snarking about “early atomic age fairy tales” discussing memes and evo-psy and the primitive faith in brain imaging such as is rampant among the new atheists.

Rieux, having apologized for the misattribution about all I can say is thank you for serving as an illustration of my points in my reply to Robert B.

As if. Your prejudice and illogic, and the absurd conclusions they lead you to draw, do not “illustrate” any “points” you have made. Shockingly enough, members of various minorities do not take kindly to ugly bigotry like yours, and we see value in shoving it right back at you. Inevitably haters like yourself interpret that as further confirmation for said bigotry, but that’s a small price to pay for the necessary practice of calling a spade a spade.

Oh, and, “Bronze age fairy tales”. Other than pointing out that you guys should at the very least try to create a few newer cliched pat dismissals, you should consider other things from the “bronze age” that you would like to do without….

No, I specifically cited the fairy tales for a reason. To anyone with basic reading comprehension, that’s not an attack on the entire content of the Bronze Age. To you, apparently it’s tough to tell.

And back to your silly dismissal of Robert’s point:

All any one of us knows about anyone else is what we experience of them. All I know of you is the experience I have of reading what you’ve posted here.

Cute semantic dance, but the Willems argument Robert was responding to was not that theists know God by virtue of “the experience [they] have”; instead, Willems declared that God “is an experience.” And Robert pointed out the most obvious problem with that notion: experiences can’t love anything.

Following the thread of an argument appears to be most difficult for you.

A conclusion that a transgenered person might have that G-d loves them is also based in their experience and such a transgendered person is in the privileged position of knowing their experience directly.

Fine. And no one is in fact questioning that experience; instead, we are pointing out the baselessness and illogic inherent in inferring supernatural notions (such as “God loves transgender people”) from it. Insistent as you are, thanks to severe levels of religious privilege, that that critique is a hateful attack on the experiencer, it is in fact an utterly ordinary use of the free marketplace of ideas.

It remains entirely unexplained what “experience” could ever lead anyone to reasonably infer that gods exist, much less that those gods have particular loves or hates or policy preferences. Pointing that out is not in fact an attack on the experience itself, your complaints notwithstanding.

Having argued these issues with atheists for about the past five years I’ve concluded that it’s primarily an emotional hatred of religion….

Which is precisely what anyone would expect a person burdened by massive levels of religious privilege and atheophobia to conclude. The utterly baseless attacks on atheists and our supposed “emotional hatred” you continually post are not evidence of anything but your own prejudice.

That’s a judgement based in my experience of as much of the thinking of contemporary atheists and the quality of their arguments….

…arguments that you oddly fail to demonstrate actual problems with…

…my conclusion that their inability to experience what religious people feel is based in that predispositions….

Oh, really? You conclude that atheists are “unable to experience what religious people feel”? Several million atheists who have previously been faithful religious believers demonstrate that you are flatly wrong about that – but more to the point here, now who’s claiming to be a superior interpreter of another person’s “experience” than the “experience”r herself? You’re quite the hypocrite.

Unlike the atheists in this discussion, I’m not interested in converting atheists to belief….

Cute! Pity that no atheist in this particular discussion has expressed or demonstrated any “interest[] in converting” anyone to anything.

It’s most unfortunate that you think your superior notions about atheists and what we do and don’t want are more important than reality. Oddly enough, that’s exactly how prejudice works.

Willems declared that God “is an experience.” And Robert pointed out the most obvious problem with that notion: experiences can’t love anything. Rieux

Perhaps Willems will clarify what was meant by G-d “is an experience”. What can you refute in what I said? Explain your use of the phrase “semantic dance” . I assume it’s meant as a dismissal but if you can’t refute anything I said about the relationship of experience and our consciousness and thinking, it wasn’t just a dance, it was directly relevant to the issue being discussed.

” But to experience being loved by God is different from having an experience that is itself God. ” Robert B

Well, as I said, perhaps what is needed is clarification of what was meant.

Though, other than our own, raw consciousness, all we can have is an experience of something. I would like to know how you separate the experience of something that is, itself, what it is (or more accuratly, might be) and what of that thing that can enter into our consciousness from what we can say about the thing, itself. That’s as true of anything in the material universe as it is for G-d or the abstract assertions that someone else makes about their ideas. Anything we can think about or talk about is present in our consciousness solely as experience. We don’t think about things we haven’t experienced.

Of course, those issues are directly relevant to science, as no less an authority than Werner Heisenberg said, “What we observe us not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” Which could be relevant to what I said about an atheist’s emotional hatred of religion and religious people and their longing to believe in their intellectual superiority hindering their ability to experience what religious believers are so convinced that they have believed. I mean, if what is discovered by science is dependent on its predisposed methodology (I’d add its abilities and the limits of human ability as well) then science must accept that the POV involved in perception is a limiting factor on what can be observed and discussed.

As I pointed out in my first comment, Ophelia and other atheists universally refuse to allow a possible transcendence in the ideas religious believers hold – refusing to allow the possibility that they are able to surpass the crude limits within which atheists insist believers believe what they believe – a transcendence which they obviously claim for atheists and atheism. However, religious believers are quite within their rights to insist that in public discourse on these ideas, that the pat refusal of ideological atheists isn’t binding on them, certainly not about questions which aren’t liable to non-ideological refutation. The belief that someone has experienced G-d’s love is exactly that kind of idea that is not liable to non-ideological dismissal.

Not all experience is observation. Meditation and prayer are not methods of questioning. Heisenburg was talking about his discovery (or perhaps, his confirmation) that a measurement is fundamentally an interaction between measurer and measured, an interaction that affects both parties. Meditation and prayer are not interactions. They are internal. You are measuring jack squat, except maybe your own brain.

If two scientists measure the same thing they will get the same results, or they will be able to explain to each other exactly how one of them messed up. For that matter, if two ordinary people read a bus schedule or describe a house they’re looking at, the same thing will happen. That tendency to produce consistent experience is what we call “reality.” If two people meditate on God, one can “find” that “God loves trans people” and another can “find” that “God hates trans people” with no account for the discrepancy other than an unexplained, unsupported “You’re doing it wrong.” This capacity to have inconsistent experience is what we call “making things up” or “being wrong.”

Or if you like, think of it this way. I’ll agree that we don’t think about things we haven’t experienced, if you take a broad enough definition of “experience”. But we sure do experience things that don’t exist. Consider the mental image you experience when you read the word “unicorn.”

You left out the rest of what I said. If what is observed in the physical world was dependent on the methodology used to observe it, indeed it limits the observation to what can be observed with that methodology, then what people think about their internal experience, outside of their own raw consciousness, perhaps, is also dependent on the same limiting factors. And remember I included the limiting factors of inabilities and the limits inherent in human perception and thought.

Eddington rather brilliantly pointed out that this is true of physical law, which is the creation of human thought. He talked about the possibility of there being physical laws that human beings were incapable of imagining and so would always escape our knowledge. I don’t recall if he pointed out that aspects of the physical universe that are only susceptible to those unknowable laws and aspects of the physical universe that could only be well understood using those unknowable laws would also be unknowable by us but I think it’s reasonable to think they might be. That point depressed Bertrand Russell rather profoundly, I think his review of the book it was said in preceded Godel’s papers which probably depressed him even more definitively. Though it was probably a clue that his classical idea of the physical universe was, indeed, outmoded. Outmoded everywhere except in ideological atheism, that is.

I’m surprised that you could know about Heisenberg and not know about the inherent limits in measurement. If it’s possible for people to come up with different answers in the measurement of the physical world, it’s hardly startling that they might be able to come up with different answers in their religious perceptions and conclusions drawn from those.

I suspect what you want to discuss is the question of the ability of people to impinge on the rights of lgbt people on the basis of negative ideas they might attribute to G-d. Which is interesting but as there is no basis in materialism to believe that lgbt people possess inherent rights to, among other things, personal determination and equality, I don’t see that materialism is superior to methods of thought that contain the possibility that the opposite conclusion could be made. The ideological explanation of just about any atheism I’m aware of, would seem to be less advantageous than religions which at least contain that as a possibility. As a gay man, knowing what I do about the brutal treatment of gay people in various countries, if I had to choose I’d rather have to try to live in Iran than I would North Korea or China. Though I’d rather live in Cuba than either of them. In fact, materialists regularly deny that even consciousness exists, so I don’t seem much advantage for the practice and enjoyment of rights under materialism. I’d certainly rather live under the state religion of Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands or Britain, especially in their contemporary manifestation, than I would the various state atheism in every single officially atheist country that has ever existed.

Materialists wouldn’t be under any moral obligation to observe rights even if they were asserted to exist, any alleged “explanation” of rights under materialism put them in the category of “agreed to illusions” or “make believe” that those ideas they most vigorously reject are also in. The artificial substitutes that atheists propose as a replacement of inherent rights are impeached by the very standards they assert are their reliable methodology for disposing of G-d.

That’s the second time you’ve tried to derail this conversation onto an attack on my ethics. The appropriate response to that involves language that’s against the comment policy on this blog. So we’re done here. Have a nice life.

Perhaps Willems will clarify what was meant by G-d “is an experience”.

Why should he? “God is an experience” is a perfectly comprehensible sentence, and what you have been going on about is entirely unconnected to it.

The Willems/Robert discussion was (as that sentence makes perfectly clear) about the nature of this God thing, and the incompatibility between God-as-experience and “God loves transgender people.” Evidently you don’t actually care to contribute to that discussion.

Robert’s response to Willems was directly relevant to Willems’ comment; your reply was not. How is that Willems’ problem – or for that matter Robert’s, or mine? None of us are responsible for the irrelevant tangent you’ve decided to hie off on.

What can you refute in what I said?

Its relevance to the topic at hand, obviously. And it hardly needs me to refute it; its irrelevance is patent on its face.

Well, as I said, perhaps what is needed is clarification of what was meant.

Buddy, the utter substitution of your ideas for Willems’ is not a “clarification.” It’s just you butting into a conversation that had nothing to do with your personal collection of silly nonsense.

Ophelia and other atheists universally refuse to allow a possible transcendence in the ideas religious believers hold….

Utter hogwash. As you know perfectly well, Ophelia, like any other ordinary atheist, merely notes that the burden is on religious believers to demonstrate that that alleged “transcendence” is anything more than a figment of their imaginations. We’re happy to “allow” the “possib[ility]” of damn near anything that’s logically coherent, whether it’s “transcendence” or tooth fairies or Easter bunnies or anything else of the kind. It merely remains up to believers to produce any actual evidence for their claims, if they want those claims taken seriously in rational discussion.

Not for nothing, we’ve noted that, for thousands of years, uncritical believers have been spouting off about the “transcendence” of innumerable religious ideas of theirs, ideas that have frequently been (1) savagely brutal toward minorities such as atheists and GLBTs and/or (2) subsequently conclusively disproved by scientific discovery. Until you or the other believers you think you represent offer up some reason for anyone to believe that your particular “transcendent” notions are less baseless or absurd than the past several millennia’s worth of religious blather, most of which everyone now agrees was nonsense, why exactly is anyone obligated to pretend that your notions deserve any respect at all?

You’re welcome to all the “possibility” that you can rationally establish you deserve. If your ideas are just as baseless as Russell’s Teapot and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, though, you really have no business blaming anyone else for threatening your fragile feelings on the subject of “possibility.”

…refusing to allow the possibility that they are able to surpass the crude limits within which atheists insist believers believe what they believe….

Oh, whine, whine, “refuse to allow the possibility,” boo freaking hoo. We’re just applying the same standard of evidence that you’d demand for any claim in any other arena of your life. Your insistence that religious notions deserve their very own privileged “don’t you dare reject this if you can’t disprove it to the level of mathematical certainty” standard is based on nothing but your own self-centered arrogance.

…a transcendence which they obviously claim for atheists and atheism.

Utterly false. We don’t claim anything “for atheists and atheism” other than (1) atheists are human beings with human rights, and (2) our atheism is a conclusion we’ve reached through reason. There is nothing “transcendent” about either, and your “obviously” is yet another instance in which you’ve mixed up your bigoted imagination with the reality of people you hate.

However, religious believers are quite within their rights to insist that in public discourse on these ideas, that the pat refusal of ideological atheists isn’t binding on them….

Of course it’s not “binding on” you: ‘it’s a free country,’ you are entitled to the basic human right of freedom of expression, and as a result you are welcome to blather whatever you’d like about those fabulous ideas of yours. Atheists (and everyone else) are merely under no obligation to maintain a deferential silence around your nonsense and avoid calling it by its right name.

Nor are we required to flatter your pretense that our rejection of your notions, a rejection based on utterly ordinary reason-and-evidence grounds, constitutes a “pat refusal.” One wonders if you spend your days worrying about all the deities humanity believes in (indeed, has ever believed in) who would brutally punish you for all the deeply impious and sinful things you do – or, otherwise, how you justify your horrific(!!) “pat refusal” to take those claims seriously.

The belief that someone has experienced G-d’s love is exactly that kind of idea that is not liable to non-ideological dismissal.

You can pretend that dismissal of your personal favorite irrationalities is “ideological” in some way that everyone’s dismissal of a million equally baseless forms of equivalent nonsense is not. Once again, though, your pretense simply fails to make it so. Pat yourself and your religious notions on the back as much as you’d like; it doesn’t make you or them the slightest bit more credible.

Since the question began in transgendered people being loved by G-d, and the assertion by an atheist ideologue that G-d didn’t love transgendered people (leaving out the interesting idea of an atheist attributing a quality to an entity they hold doesn’t exist) the issues I brought up and brought up by other people, including yourself, what I said is on topic and relevant, if predictably unwelcome by atheists.

As a practical matter this question is only important in so far as the various groups involved have treated, do treat and might treat transgender folk (as well as other sexual-gender minorities) on the basis of their understanding of religion and, indeed, the experience that tlbg people have of the divine and the way they relate that experience to their own lives.

I see no basis that materialism could have that would allow for the claims of transgendered people to their rights of fair and equal treatment that is consistent with materialism. I’ve never seen a materialist assertion of “rights” that presents them as anything but imaginary, the creation of social conventions. Materialistic “rights” are as imaginary and unreal as G-d or inherent rights are asserted to be by materialists. Rights held to be imaginary don’t seem to me to contain any kind of incentive for those who want to exploit or harm other people to resist a desire to do that. Short of the possibility of violent retaliation, there wouldn’t be any restraint on that kind of violation of imaginary”rights”. Materialism is a really lousy guarantor of rights because of that, as history shows and as a number of atheists have explicitly shown as they deny that real rights exist. I’d rather take my chances with religions that assert rights are given by G-d and that they are inherently and equally held. I strongly suspect the violations of that morality would be fewer and might, in some cases at least, be mitigated by fear of divine retribution.

I’ve never, once, read an instance in which a new atheist takes the possibility that a religious person’s experience of the divine is real and that what they say about it is an accurate representation of something real. The various charges of delusion and ignorance, a charge made remarkably often to people who operate rather rationally and who are often rather amazingly well read and informed, is one of the mainstays of atheism, old and new.

I have never, once, read a new atheist who held their own ideas up to the standards and methods of debunking and “skepticism” and impeachment that they regularly hold the ideas of religious people to. And I’m not even mentioning the frequently febrile content of the new atheist discourse as they assert their rationality and rightness, blog mobbing being an obvious replacement of the necessity of rational, informed discourse.

I’ve never, once, read an instance in which a new atheist takes the possibility that a religious person’s experience of the divine is real and that what they say about it is an accurate representation of something real.

And I don’t recall anyone openly declaring that, despite his or her own skepticism, maybe the Easter bunny actually exists. So what? Why do atheists have a responsibility to stroke the sensitive fee-fees of an overwhelmingly powerful and ignorant majority?

Your notion that there is some kind of overriding moral imperative to say nice things about absurd, irrational, and baseless (but perhaps as likely-to-be-true as Pastafarianism – how impressive!) notions about the universe is grounded in nothing but your own incredible privilege.

Delusion and ignorance are demonstrably a major part of the human world. They have played enormous roles in human history. “Transcendent” immaterialisms have no such history.

Reality can be difficult to accept, but that doesn’t make it any the less real – nor does it justify shooting the messenger who dares to point it out to you.

…blog mobbing being an obvious replacement of the necessity of rational, informed discourse.

That’s what you call the masses of privilege, illogic, and dishonesty that you and Scofield have favored us with on this thread? “Rational, informed discourse”? It is to laugh.

“Blog mobbing” or no, atheist bloggers and commenters alike have cut Scofield’s assertions and (at lesser length) yours to ribbons. Unable to substantively hate the game, apparently the only recourse you’ve got left is to hate the players. Oh, well.

Rieux, I have to thank you again for volunteering as an illustration of my points and, especially as an illustration of my point about the transcendence that atheists insist on for their ideas even as they deny that for the ideas to the vast majority of the population, violating their own stated standards in the process. Perhaps, not really believing that morality is more than a social convention, their insisting on a double standard in their favor is to be expected.

I’m hoping that more and more people left of center will wake up to the fact that materialism is inherently anti-liberal and that atheists should not be granted a level of courtesy out of some mistaken notion that they are a horribly discriminated against minority group. They are a minority group, a very tiny one, which has full civil rights protection in the United States and has had it since 1965, something lgbt people don’t have. Their aggressively hogging the microphone has done enormous damage to the left, far out of proportion to the value of their ideas, which are hardly necessary for liberalism to succeed and wildly out of proportion to their tiny numbers. The periods of greatest progress on the left in the post-war period was characterized by liberal religious activism, such as the Reverend Martin Luther King jr and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. It’s been when atheists have asserted the greatest influence that progress sputtered to a stop. Since materialism is inherently anti-liberal, that’s not terribly surprising, not to mention that, by far, the numbers of religious people on the left and who could be convinced to vote for more liberal candidates are many times greater. Allowing atheists to indiscriminately antagonizing religious people who might support liberal candidates is one of the most politically stupid things the left does.

Rieux, I have to thank you again for volunteering as an illustration of my points….

Yes, yes, you’ve tried that gambit already. You’re deeply offended by atheists who are so uppity as to talk back to your estimable religious personage. You are mistaking your disgruntlement at the fact that I clearly don’t know my place for an objective indication – one felt by people who don’t share your slavering atheophobia – that I’ve done something wrong, justified your prejudice, “illustrated” your bigoted “point.” Sorry, pal, but many of us you think are your inferiors, many of us rabble who you you’d prefer didn’t speak unless spoken to have no intention of deferring to your ridiculous privilege and arrogance.

…and, especially as an illustration of my point about the transcendence that atheists insist on for their ideas….

How absurd can you get? I have never asserted that any idea I or any other atheist holds is “transcendent.” How badly does one have to mangle the things I’ve written to end up drawing such bizarre conclusions? What color is the sky in your world?

…even as they deny that for the ideas to the vast majority of the population, violating their own stated standards in the process.

You’re loopy. Precisely what “stated standards” are you pretending atheists have about our own “ideas”‘ transcendence?

They are a minority group, a very tiny one, which has full civil rights protection in the United States and has had it since 1965….

Yeah, you’ve tried that one on us before as well – at which point you got your derriere handed to you regarding various inconvenient facts… such as the minor problem that there was no “civil rights protection” or Civil Rights Act passed in 1965. You apparently meant 1964. You were corrected. You’ve obviously forgotten that – because here you are, blathering the 1965 nonsense again. A clearer illustration of the degree to which you value your own delusions over objective fact is hard to imagine.

Getting back to the discrimination that you pretend doesn’t exist: as you were shown on the thread linked above (and Matthew Nisbet was shown on the previous thread I linked to in that one), atheists are routinely denied custody of their children in United States courts on the grounds that we cannot be trusted to provide them with a proper religious upbringing.
(And as I explained to you back on that thread, such severe judicial abuse doesn’t violate any Civil Rights Act, because no statute bars religious discrimination in child custody decisions. The abuse especially doesn’t violate the Civil Rights Act of 1965, because there is no Civil Rights Act of 1965. Someday that fact may yet penetrate your skull.)

Atheists are routinely denied jobs, kicked out of housing, and disowned by their parents. On numerous occasions have been threatened, assaulted, and murdered by atheophobes. In 2011, EllenBeth Wachs, legal coordinator of Atheists of Florida, was arrested twice and falsely charged with felonies in retaliation for the attempts she has made to end her county’s blatant establishment of Christianity. No Civil Rights Act has prevented any of this.

So regardless of your pitifully willful blindness, atheists are in fact discriminated against both broadly and cruelly. The real problem, of course, is that you are Anthony McCarthy, you are an atheophobic bigot, and as such you regard atheists as subhuman wretches whose very claim to human regard is meaningless and nugatory. Ugly discrimination by both public officials and powerful private actors against atheists does not concern you because you are Anthony McCarthy, you are an atheophobic bigot, and you regard atheists as subhuman.

Thankfully, not all that many people are as far-gone into hatred of nonbelievers as you are.

Their aggressively hogging the microphone has done enormous damage to the left….

Well, obviously it appears that way to a thoroughgoing bigot. Inveterate racists are presumably just as scandalized that the left allows ethnic minorities to “aggressively hog the microphone.” Same with drooling homophobes and queers. Why in the world should “the left” allocate microphone time based on your disgusting prejudice?

The periods of greatest progress on the left in the post-war period was characterized by liberal religious activism, such as the Reverend Martin Luther King jr and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Of course – because the religious majority in this country is so privileged and self-centered that it (much like you) refuses to listen to a word about social policy that isn’t spoken by members of their own religious tribe. As a result, the Civil Rights movement, like every justice movement before and since in American history, (1) was forced to place their religious figures front-and-center even though (2) the movement itself was far less demographically religious than the American population they were trying to persuade. Justice movements promote their religious members because those are the only ones who have any chance of persuading atheophobic bigots like you to do the right thing.

It’s been when atheists have asserted the greatest influence that progress sputtered to a stop.

Bigoted crap. Your truculent ignorance of the vast contributions that atheists and other religious skeptics have made toward every justice movement in American history is nauseating.

Allowing atheists to indiscriminately antagonizing religious people who might support liberal candidates is one of the most politically stupid things the left does.

Well, there’s a new phenomenon under the sun: a bigot is whining that political parties ought to (continue to) bury and muzzle a disempowered minority he personally happens to despise.

The only problem you’ve actually identified here is that you are Anthony McCarthy, you are an atheophobic bigot, and you regard atheists as subhuman. We have no obligation to listen to your hateful garbage.

Rereading this thread, I should also point out the place that quasi-professional interest holds in the new atheism. Especially in the age of self-publishing, there are a number of writers who would be entirely obscure if it wasn’t for their increasingly ugly new atheist scribbling. Some would be obscure members of faculties at small colleges and universities with scanty publication records in their specialties, some wouldn’t even be that prominent and so have to create their own version of bona fides, confident that that suffices for their intended audience . The new atheism is not much different from the world or right-wing hate talk radio in that. Given the quality of their anti-religious thinking, their obscurity in a less attractively and superficially exciting field would be likely. Which is why they have to continually pump up the attacks on their opponents and the stroking of the egos of their fan base. That ego stroking and mutual congratulation is the primary attraction for the fan base who are often remarkably ignorant for self appointed champions of science and reason.

The internet has allowed a number of pretty dodgy characters to do what Michael Shermer and James Randi reportedly recommended at the Amazing Meeting 3, to become “experts” by the act of declaring themselves to be “experts”.

“Becoming an expert is a pretty simple procedure; tell people you’re an expert. After you do that, all you have to do is maintain appearances and not give them a reason to believe you’re not.”

It gives such “experts” the ability to be published and to rope in a bunch of true (dis)believers.

I’m an agnostic. I’m unsure as for what I think, I’m sort of like a panthiest, but I’m not so sure the universe is not aware. I think heaven & hell are pretty suspect, but reincarnation is a cool concept. I think jesus was a great rabbi and we all could learn a great deal from him. The “I’ll be back jesus” not really a fan. Hope my poor spelling doesn’t sully my message!

Ya know, as an “old atheist” (and a trans person, to boot), I’ve grown pretty tired of all the arrogant new atheist blather. It’s just another form of religious intolerance. There’s already enough of that in the world. Why in hell people would want to add to it is beyond me. Furthermore, why is it that the loudest, most obnoxious people of any given faith and/or philosophy always seem to rise to the top and get the most exposure?

I’d love to put new atheists and the other fundamentalists of the world’s faiths on a island somewhere and let them duke it out. The last one standing gets a piece of cake.

While the slaughter ensues in some far off corner of the world, the rest of us can finally enjoy some peace and quiet.

I’d love to put new atheists and the other fundamentalists of the world’s faiths on a island somewhere and let them duke it out. The last one standing gets a piece of cake.

timberwraith,

Gee … I wish I could be as respectful of diverse viewpoints as you are. Apparently the best way to show that respect is to hope that those you disagree with are exiled to remote island and forced into gladitorial combat to their deaths (that’s what I’m assuming by your “last one standing” quote).

And I bet the cake is a lie.

:^)

Religious views and atheist views are simply ideas.

We live in a marketplace of ideas where it’s perfectly appropriate to question ideas. A recent change in the marketplace of ideas is that we are now starting to question religious ideas in the same way that we question ideas in other areas (sciences, arts, politics, economics, philosophy, etc).

Questioning an idea isn’t intollerance.

Finally, the best response I’ve seen to the tired and bigoted trope that atheism is yet another form of fundamentalist intollerance can be found in the xkcd webcomic:

I love God.
I love transgender people.
I love atheists.
I love people who think I’m dangerously deluded.
I love people who are religious progressives.
I believe in unilateral disarmament.
I believe in “first strike” kindness.
I am an atheist to the god of violent holy war/jihad
I believe in everyone being fed, forgiven.
I worry about the temptation that to fight against evil I will become evil in the process.
I believe that Dr. King was right
The arc of the moral universe is long and it bends towards justice.
When I look at the evidence for Dr. King’s belief, it is often lacking.
Yet when I believe in spite of the evidence, the evidence begins to change.
That is my Reality.
You may affirm it.
You may attack it.
Either way, peace to you!